'And therefore,' he says, 'if posterity shall ask "Who thrust out one of the eyes of this kingdom, who made Eloquence dumb, Philosophy sottish, widowed the Arts, and drove the Muses from their ancient habitation? Who plucked the reverend and orthodox professors out of their chairs, and silenced them in prison or their graves? Who turned Religion into Rebellion, and changed the apostolical chair into a desk for blasphemy, and tore the garland from the head of Learning to place it on the dull brows of disloyal ignorance?" If they shall ask "Who made those ancient and beautiful chapels, the sweet remembrances and monuments of our fore-fathers' charity and the kind fomenters of their children's devotion, to become ruinous heaps of dust and stones?"... 'Tis quickly answered--"Those they were, who endeavouring to share three Crowns and put them in their own pockets, have transformed this free kingdom into a large gaol, _to keep the liberty of the subject_: they who maintain 100,000 robbers and murderers by sea and land, _to protect our lives and the propriety of our goods_ ... they who have possessed themselves of his majesty's towns, navy, and magazines, _to make him a glorious king_; who have multiplied oaths, protestations, vows, leagues and covenants, _for ease of tender consciences_; filling all pulpits with jugglers for the Cause, canting sedition, atheism, and rebellion, _to root out popery and Babylon and settle the kingdom of Christ_:... The very same have stopped the mouth of all learning (following herein the example of their elder brother the Turk), lest any should be wiser than themselves, or posterity know what a world of wickedness they have committed."'[47] [_PHILOSOPHICAL MEETINGS._] Wadham College probably suffered less than many, as its head, Dr. Wilkins, who had married Cromwell's sister, was very submissive to the then Government. As matters settled down somewhat at Oxford towards 1648, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, Dr. Wallis, Mr. Theodore Hank, who came from the desolated Palatinate, and Mr. S. Foster, the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, met together weekly, 'to discourse and consider,' writes Dr. Wallis, '(precluding theology and state affairs), of philosophical enquiries, and such as related thereunto: as physick, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, staticks, magneticks, chymicks, mechanicks, and natural experiments with the state of those studies as then calculated at home and abroad.'